Into the Fire

Thanks to books like Fifty Shades of Grey, there’s been a huge boom in mainstream erotica novels. In fact, the popularity has birthed an entirely new genre, one that combines traditional romance novel tropes with steamy erotic situations. These new novels are called romantica — and we can’t get enough of them. Like romance or erotica, romantica is mostly written by and for women. It also includes all kinds of sexy tropes, but the most common is definitely lite-BDSM. These are stories about powerful men dominating equally-powerful women who can hold their own both in and out of the bedroom. But unlike straight-up erotica, the man and woman also fall in love, creating a compelling romantic storyline as well as some…